"I don't know what to say," said one UK fund manager when we rang him to ask what he thought about a particular bank's equity trading offering. "I'm not a great fan of it. The performance is atrocious."
This was not the response we had expected. As part of our assessment of the 160 or so sites that we were shown for the 2001 internet awards, euromoney.com asked the banks to provide names and numbers of people who used them, to get some user feedback. The bank that recommended this fund manager considers itself unrivalled in its ability to gauge client satisfaction.
Some of the site users that the banks gave us were particularly enthusiastic, but then most of them turned out to be former employees of the firms that had recommended them. Nice try.
This reveals a serious point: banks still have some way to go before they can say they know what clients want, especially in trading.